Mumbai violence: Organiser says crowd shocked him too,stir was about rights

The protest was spoilt by radical elements in the community: Maulana Ahmed Raza.

Now juggling appointments with advocates and legal advisers,25-year-old Maulana Ahmed Raza,who was the co-organiser of the Mumbai protest against atrocities on Muslims in Myanmar and Assam that turned violent,says his motive was to create awareness among the community. And that the protest was spoilt by radical elements in the community.

A Bihar native settled in Kurla,who got by doing sundry jobs,Raza has done a one-year preaching course in the UK. Earlier this year,he returned and now runs,what he calls,a modern madarsa in Kurla with an English curriculum that encourages English speaking. Six months ago,he also set up the Madeenatul-elm Foundation,and it was this organisation that procured permission for 1,000 protesters for the Saturday agitation.

Raza was approached by a friend and a scrapdealer Rizwan Khan to organise the protest. Several NGOs and mosques supported him eventually.

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The crowd was not what we anticipated, he claimed. We are sure that some radical elements took advantage of the occasion.

While he accepted that he may have failed to keep the police updated,Khan said: I live in a rented apartment in Kurla… It will not take long for me to lock the house and go away. But I want to help the police. I heard some of the protesters have a history of rioting. I am not one of them. Our intention was to raise a human rights issue. It snowballed into something else, he said.

As police piece together the background of the 15 organisations including the Madeenatul-elm Foundation that were part of the protest,Raza said the idea was to create awareness on matters that affect the community.

Eighty per cent of the crowd didnt even know that Assam is part of this country. I am not judging them,but I am giving you a taste of the crowd. The community is upset that no one is hearing them,or even condemning the attacks in Burma and Assam, he said.